I always take machete the higher hp and faster clear is worth more than the tiny armor from cloth or the tiny speed from basic boots.

That said I have one giant glaring problem with Machete, or more to the point it's upgrades. I like to jungle Shen on occasion. Wriggles isn't actively bad on him but aside from the ward it's basically wasted stats for someone building pure tank. Even if not building pure tank on Shen you're picking up AP which isn't on wriggles so no matter how you look at it wriggles is not particularly beneficial upgrade. Spirit stone has mana regen so it's a decent chunk of wasted gold not to mention the spirit stone itself pre upgrade is basically useless to Shen.

Would like a viable manaless TANK upgrade to machete but that's my only gripe with it. people who run without it tend to lose to me in gank/countergank scenarios simply because I have more hp and/or some extra pots in my inventory and their cloth or boots just doesn't compare with that extra hp.

You had no explicit offensive or defensive stats starting with boots in S2, since everyone started boots. You paid for reduced time between camps and to not get left behind in ganks.

Well, now you get free movespeed, reduced clear time, and you're relatively the same speed as most laners. Plus you get two extra pots. So I guess you're doing OK?

EDIT: Say you're a manaless jungler and you get Spirit Stone for 800g total. You just got 504g worth of hp5 at cost, and paid 296g for the jungle passives. That's still not a bad deal. You even have a manaless route in Wriggles to go down if you really hate the mp5 that much.

This. I have no idea why people complain about the mana regen on it, it's a minimal investment (180g for the faerie charm omfg) for a whopping 10% extra damage to monsters.

I think the big complaint is being forced to itemize stats you don't need/want. And most junglers really don't need the mana or hp regen after their first clear, so you are spending 500 some gold for stats that still won't assist on a gank. Sure the extra monster damage is nice but again, it is not needed, especially for gank heavy junglers. I think the complaint is more how it feels like you are forced into taking machete, and not that the machete items are bad.

Edit: And to the guy above me, that's the problem. Junglers are forced to take certain items that some of them don't want and make it feel stale and boring. There are all the options in items other people get but the jungle sits there with the same build every time. Just because it was a problem before doesn't mean we can't still complain about it now.